Chapter XII: ARRINGTON. A vill of 4 hides (3)

[672] D. B. i. 83: 'Bricsi tenuit miles Regis E.' Such entries are
rare. D. B. i. 66: 'De eadem terra huius manerii ten[ent] duo
Angli.... Unus ex eis est miles iussu Regis et nepos fuit
Hermanni episcopi.' Here the king compels an Englishman to
become a _miles_. D. B. i. 180 b: 'Quinque taini ... habebant
sub se 4 milites.' The warrior was not necessarily of thegnly
rank.

[673] See the passages collected by Schmid, Gesetze, p. 667.

[674] In their treatment of the thegnship of the last days before
the Conquest, Maurer lays stress upon the proprietary element,
Schmid upon the hereditary. See Little, Gesiths and Thegns, E.
H. R. iv. 723.

[675] Cnut, ii. 71.

[676] D. B. i. 280 b.

[677] Hamilton, Inquisitio, 121.

[678] Eyton, Somerset, i. 84.

[679] D. B. iv. 75: 'Dominicatus Regis ad Regnum pertinens in
Devenescira.' Ib. 99: 'Mansiones de Comitatu.' Eyton,
Somerset, i. 78.

[680] D. B. ii. 119: 'Hoc manerium fuit de regno, sed Rex Edwardus
dedit Radulfo Comiti.' Ib. 144: 'Suafham pertinuit ad regionem
et Rex E. dedit R. Comiti.' Ib. 281 b: 'Terra Regis de Regione
quam Rogerus Bigotus servat.' Ib. 408 b: 'Tornei manerium
Regis de regione.' Mr Round, Feudal England, p. 140, treats
_regio_ as a mere blunder; but it may well stand for
_kingship_.

[681] D. B. i. 30 b: 'Huius villae villani ab omni re vicecom[itis]
sunt quieti.'

[682] D. B. iv. 99.

[683] Pseudoleges Canuti (= Liebermann's Instituta Cnuti), 55
(Schmid, p. 430): 'Comitis rectitudines secundum Anglos istae
sunt communes cum rege: tertius denarius in villis ubi
mercatum convenerit, et in castigatione latronum, et comitales
villae, quae ad comitatum eius pertinent.'

[684] D. B. ii. 118 b: 'Terre Regis in Tetford ... est una leugata
terre in longa et dim. in lato de qua Rex habet duas partes:
de his autem duabus partibus tercia pars in consulatu iacet.'
But this seems to mean that only this part of the land is in
the county of Norfolk. Ibid. i. 246: in Stafford the king has
twenty-two houses 'de honore comitum.'

[685] D. B. i. 246.

[686] Ellis, Introduction. i. 313. When twenty years after Harold's
death a question about the title to land is at issue, there
seems no reason why the jurors should tell lies about Harold.

[687] D. B. i. 154 b.

[688] D. B. i. 172.

[689] D. B. i. 238.

[690] D. B. i. 56 b: Berkshire custom, 'Qui monitus ad stabilitionem
venationis non ibat 50 sol. Regi emendabat.' See also the
Hereford custom, Ib. 179; also Rectitudines (Schmid, App.
III.) c. 1.

[691] D. B. i. 69. But the meaning of _reveland_ is obscure. The
most important passages about it are in D. B. i. 57 b
(Eseldeborne), 181 (Getune). D. B. i. 83: 'Hanc tenet Aiulf de
Rege quamdiu erit vicecomes.'

[692] D. B. i. 100.

[693] D. B. i. 86, 86 b, 92, 97; so in Devonshire, 117 b: 'Hoc
manerium debet per consuetudinem in Tavetone manerium Regis
aut 1 bovem aut 30 denarios.'

[694] D. B. i. 38 b.

[695] D. B. i. 101: 'Ipsi manerio pertinet tercius denarius de
hundredis Nortmoltone et Badentone et Brantone et tercium
animal pasturae morarum.'

[696] Above, p. 155.

[697] Chron. ann. 1085.

§ 9. _The Boroughs._

[Borough and village.]

Dark as the history of our villages may be, the history of the boroughs is darker yet; or rather, perhaps, the darkness seems blacker because we are compelled to suppose that it conceals from our view changes more rapid and intricate than those that have happened in the open country. The few paragraphs that follow will be devoted mainly to the development of one suggestion which has come to us from foreign books, but which may throw a little light where every feeble ray is useful. At completeness we must not aim, and in our first words we ought to protest that no general theory will tell the story of every or any particular town[698].

[The borough in cent. xiii.]

In the thirteenth century a legal, though a wavering, line is drawn between the borough and the mere vill or rural township[699]. It is a wavering line, for stress can be laid now upon one and now upon another attribute of the ancient and indubitable boroughs, and this selected attribute can then be employed as a test for the claims of other towns. When in Edward I.'s day the sheriffs are being told to bid every borough send two burgesses to the king's parliaments, there are somewhat more than 150 places to which such summonses will at times be addressed, though before the end of the middle ages the number of 'parliamentary boroughs' will have shrunk to 100 or thereabouts[700]. Many towns seem to hover on the border line and in some cases the sheriff has been able to decide whether or no a town shall be represented in the councils of the realm. Yet if we go back to the early years of the tenth century, we shall still find this contrast between the borough and the mere township existing as a contrast whence legal consequences flow. Where lies the contrast? What is it that makes a borough to be a borough? That is the problem that we desire to solve. It is a legal problem. We are not to ask why some places are thickly populated or why trade has flowed in this or that channel. We are to ask why certain vills are severed from other vills and are called boroughs.

[The number of the boroughs.]

We may reasonably wish, however, since mental pictures must be painted, to know at the outset whereabouts the line will be drawn, and whether when we are speaking of the Conqueror's reign and earlier times we shall have a large or a small number of boroughs on our hands. Will it be a hundred and fifty, or a hundred, or will it be only fifty? At once we will say that some fifty boroughs stand out prominently and will demand our best attention, though a second and far less important class was already being formed.

[The aid-paying boroughs of cent. xii.]

In the middle of the twelfth century the Exchequer was treating certain places in an exceptional fashion. It was subjecting them to a special tax in the form of an _auxilium_ or _donum_. This fact we may take as the starting point for our researches. Now if we read the unique Pipe Roll of Henry I.'s reign and the earliest Pipe Rolls of Henry II.'s we observe that an 'aid' or a 'gift' is from time to time collected from the 'cities and boroughs,' and if we put down the names of the towns which are charged with this impost, we obtain a remarkable result[701]. Speaking broadly we may say that the only towns which pay are 'county towns.' For a large part of England this is strictly true. We will follow the order of Domesday Book, beginning however with its second zone. If London is in Middlesex[702], it is Middlesex's one borough. In Hertfordshire is Hertford. In Buckinghamshire is Buckingham, but no aid can be expected from it. In Oxfordshire is Oxford. In Gloucestershire is Gloucester, but Winchcombe also asserts its burghal rank. In Worcestershire is Worcester, while Droitwich appears occasionally with a small gift. Hereford is the one borough of Herefordshire. Turning to the third zone, we pass rapidly through Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire; each has its borough. This will be true of Leicestershire also; but Leicester is by this time so completely in the hands of its earl that the king gets nothing from it. Nor, it would seem, does he get anything from Warwick. Half in Warwickshire, half in Staffordshire lies Tamworth; Stafford also pays. At times Bridgenorth appears beside Shrewsbury. Nothing is received from Chester, for it is the head of a palatinate. Derby, Nottingham and York are the only representatives of their shires. Lincolnshire has Stamford on its border as well as Lincoln in its centre. Norfolk has Thetford as well as Norwich; but Suffolk has only Ipswich and Essex only Colchester.

[Aid-paying boroughs in the south.]

In the southern zone matters are not so simple. Kent contains Canterbury and Rochester; Surrey contains Guildford and Southwark; Sussex only Chichester. Hampshire has Winchester; Southampton is receiving special treatment. Wallingford represents Berkshire. When we get to Wiltshire and Dorset we are in the classical land of small boroughs. There are various little towns whose fate is in the balance; Marlborough and Calne seem for the moment to be the most prominent. In Somersetshire, whatever may have been true in the past, Ilchester is standing out as the one borough that pays an aid. Exeter has now no second in Devonshire. If there is a borough in Cornwall, it makes no gift to the king.

[List of aids.]

We may obtain some notion of the relative rank of these towns if we set forth the amounts with which they are charged in 1130 and in 1156, though the materials for this comparison are unfortunately incomplete.

Pipe Roll Pipe Roll
31 Hen. I 2 Hen. II
£ £
London 120 120
Winchester 80
Lincoln 60 60
York 40 40
Norwich 30 33-1/3
Exeter 20
Canterbury 20 13-1/3
Colchester 20[2] 12-2/3[703]
Oxford 20 20
Gloucester 15 15
Wallingford 15
Worcester 15
Cambridge 12 12
Hereford 10
Thetford 10
Northampton 10
Rochester 10
Nottingham} 15 15
Derby }
Wiltshire boroughs 17
Calne 1
Dorset boroughs 15
Huntingdon 8 8
Ipswich 7 3-1/3
Guildford 5 5
Southwark 5 5
Hertford 5
Stamford 5
Bedford 5 6-2/3
Shrewsbury 5
Droitwich 5
Stafford 3-1/3 3-1/3
Winchcombe 3 5
Tamworth 2-3/4 1-1/4[704]
Ilchester 2-1/2
Chichester[705]

[Value of the list.]

Now we are not putting this forward as a list of those English towns that were the most prosperous in the middle of the twelfth century. We have made no mention of flourishing seaports, of Dover, Hastings, Bristol, Yarmouth. Nor is this a list of all the places that are casually called _burgi_ on rolls of Henry II.'s reign. That name is given to Scarborough, Knaresborough, Tickhill, Cirencester and various other towns. New tests of 'burgality' (if we may make that word) are emerging and old tests are becoming obsolete. We see too that some towns are dropping out of the list of aid-paying boroughs. In 1130 Wallingford has thrice failed to pay its aid of £15 and the whole debt of £45 must be forgiven to the burgesses _pro paupertate eorum_[706]. So Wallingford drops out of this list. Probably Buckingham has dropped out at an earlier time for a similar reason. But still this list, especially in the form that it takes in Henry I.'s time, is of great importance to those who are going to study the boroughs of Domesday Book. It looks like a traditional list. It deals out nice round sums. It is endeavouring to keep Wallingford on a par with Gloucester and above Northampton. It is retaining Winchcombe.

[The boroughs in Domesday.]

If we make the experiment, we shall discover that this catalogue really is a good prologue to Domesday Book. We will once more visit the counties which form the second zone. The account that our record gives of Hertfordshire has a preface. That preface deals with the borough of Hertford and precedes even the list of the Hertfordshire tenants in chief. Buckingham in Buckinghamshire and Oxford in Oxfordshire are similarly treated. In Gloucestershire the city of Gloucester and the borough of Winchcombe are described before the body of the county is touched. In Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire[707], Shropshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire[708] and Yorkshire the same procedure is adopted: the account of the shire's city or borough precedes the account of the shire. In Lincolnshire the description of the county is introduced by the description of Lincoln and Stamford; also of Torksey, which had been a place of military importance and seems to have been closely united with the city of Lincoln by some governmental bond[709]. Convenient arrangement is not the strong point of 'Little Domesday'; but what is said therein of Colchester is said at the very end of the survey of Essex, while Norwich, Yarmouth and Thetford stand at the end of the royal estates in Norfolk, and Ipswich stands at the end of the royal estates in Suffolk.

[Southern boroughs in Domesday.]

If now we enter the southern zone and keep in our minds the scheme that we have seen prevailing in the greater part of England, we shall observe that the account of Kent has a prologue touching Dover, Canterbury and Rochester. In Berkshire an excellent account of Wallingford precedes the rubric _Terra Regis_. Four places in Dorset are singled out for prefatory treatment, namely, Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham and Shaftesbury. In Devon Exeter stands, if we may so speak, above the line, and stands alone, though Barnstaple, Lidford and Totness are reckoned as boroughs. Of the other counties there is more to be said. If we compare the first page of the survey of Somerset with the first pages that are devoted to its two neighbours, Dorset and Devon, we shall probably come to the conclusion that the compilers of the book scrupled to put any Somerset vill on a par with Exeter, Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham and Shaftesbury. In each of the three cases the page is mapped out in precisely the same fashion. The second column is headed by _Terra Regis_. A long way down in the first column begins the list of tenants in chief. The upper part of the first column contains in one case the account of Exeter, in another the account of the four Dorset boroughs, but in the third case, that of Somerset, it is left blank. In Wiltshire Malmesbury and Marlborough stand above the line; but, if we look to the foot of the page, we shall suspect that the compilers can not easily force their general scheme upon this part of the country. In Surrey no place stands above the line. Guildford is the first place mentioned on the _Terra Regis_; Southwark seems to be inadequately treated on a later page. The case of Sussex is like that of Somerset; the list of the tenants in chief is preceded by a blank space. In Hampshire a whole column is left blank. On a later page the borough of Southampton has a column to itself; in the next column stands the _Terra Regis_ of the Isle of Wight. And now let us turn back to the Middlesex that we have as yet ignored. Nearly two columns, to say nothing of some precedent pages, are void[710].

[The boroughs and the plan of Domesday Book.]

Now we must not be led away into speculations which would be vain. We must not, for example, inquire whether the information that had been obtained touching London and Winchester was too bulky to fill a room that had been left for it. We must not inquire whether something was to be said of Chichester or Hastings, of Ilchester or of Bristol that has not been said. But apparently we may attribute to King William's officials a certain general idea. It is an idea which suits the greater part of England very well, though they find difficulties in their way when they endeavour to impose it on some of the counties that lie south of the Thames. The broad fact stands clear that throughout the larger part of England the commissioners found a town in each county, and in general one town only, which required special treatment. They do not locate it on the _Terra Regis_; they do not locate it on any man's land. It stands outside the general system of land tenure.

[The borough on no man's land.]

For a while, then, let us confine our attention to these county towns, and we shall soon see why it is that they are rarely brought under any rubric which would describe them as pieces of the king's soil or pieces of some one else's soil. The trait to which we allude we shall call (for want of a better term) the tenurial heterogeneity of the burgesses. In those boroughs that are fully described we seldom, if ever, find that all the burgesses have the same landlord. Of course there is a sense in which, according to the view of the Domesday surveyors and of all later lawyers, every inch of borough land is held of one landlord, namely, the king; but in that sense every inch of England has the same landlord. The fact that we would bring into relief is this, that normally the burgesses of the borough do not hold their burgages immediately of one and the same lord; they are not 'peers of a tenure'; the group that they constitute is not a tenurial group. Far rather we shall find that, though there will be some burgesses holding immediately of the king, there will be others whose titles can be traced to the king only through the medium of other lords. And the mesne lord will often be a very great man, some prelate or baron with a widespread honour. Within the borough he will, to use the language of Domesday Book, 'have' or 'hold' a small group of burgesses, and sometimes they will be reckoned as annexed to or as 'lying in' some manor distant from the town. It seems generally expected that the barons of the county should have a few burgages apiece in the county town. This arrangement does not look new. Seemingly the great men of an earlier day, the _antecessores_ of the Frenchmen, have owned town-houses: not so much houses for their own use, as houses or 'haws' (_hagae_) in which they could keep a few 'burgesses.'

[Heterogeneous tenures in the boroughs.]

Some examples of this remarkable arrangement should be given. First we will look at Oxford. The king has many houses; the Archbishop of Canterbury has 7; the Bishop of Winchester 9; the Bishop of Bayeux 18; the Bishop of Lincoln 30; the Bishop of Coutances 2; the Bishop of Hereford 3; the Abbot of St Edmund's 1; the Abbot of Abingdon 14; the Abbot of Eynsham 13. And so with the worldly great:--the Count of Mortain has 10; Count Hugh has 7; the Count of Evreux 1; Robert of Ouilly 12; Roger of Ivry 15; Walter Giffard 17:--but we need not repeat the whole long list[711].

It is so at Wallingford; King Edward had 8 virgates on which were 276 houses, and they paid him £11 rent; Bishop Walkelin of Winchester has 27, which pay 25 shillings; the Abbot of Abingdon has two acres, on which are 7 houses paying 4 shillings; Milo Crispin has 20 houses, which pay 12 shillings and 10 pence; and so forth[712]. Further, it is said that the Bishop's 27 houses are valued in Brightwell; and, turning to the account of Brightwell, there, sure enough, we find mention of the 25 shillings which these houses pay[713]. Milo's 20 houses are said to 'lie in' Newnham; he has also in Wallingford 6 houses which are in Hazeley, 1 which is in Stoke, 1 which is in Chalgrove, one acre with 6 houses which is in Sutton, one acre with 11 houses which is in Bray; 'all this land' we are told 'belongs to Oxfordshire, but nevertheless it is in Wallingford.' Yes, Milo's manor of Chalgrove lies five, his manor of Hazeley lies seven miles from Wallingford; nevertheless, houses which are physically in Wallingford are constructively in Chalgrove and Hazeley. That we are not dealing with a Norman novelty is in this case extremely plain. Wallingford is a border town. We read first of the Berkshire landowners who have burgesses within it. There follows a list of the Oxfordshire 'thegns' who hold houses in Wallingford. Archbishop Lanfranc and Count Hugh appear in this context as 'thegns' of Oxfordshire.

[Examples of heterogeneity.]

When we have obtained this clue, we soon begin to see that what is true of Oxford and Wallingford is true even of those towns of which no substantive description is given us. Thus there are 'haws' or town-houses in Winchester which are attached to manors in all corners of Hampshire, at Wallop, Clatford, Basingstoke, Eversley, Candover, Strathfield, Minstead and elsewhere. Some of the manors to which the burghers of London were attached are not, even in our own day, within our monstrous town; there are some at Banstead and Bletchingley in Surrey, at Waltham and Thurrock in Essex. But in every quarter we see this curious scheme. At Warwick the king has in his demesne 113 houses, and his barons have 112[714]. Of the barons' houses it is written: 'These houses belong to the lands which the barons hold outside the borough and are valued there.' Or turn we to a small town:--at Buckingham the barons have 26 burgesses; no one of them has more than 5.[715] The page that tells us this presents to us an admirable contrast between Buckingham and its future rival. Aylesbury is just an ordinary royal manor and stands under the rubric _Terra Regis_. Buckingham is a very petty townlet; but it is a borough, and Count Hugh and the Bishop of Coutances, Robert of Ouilly, Roger of Ivry, Arnulf of Hesdin and other mighty men have burgesses there. As a climax we may mention the case of Winchcombe. The burgages in this little town were held by many great people. About the year 1100 the king had 60; the Abbot of Winchcombe 40; the Abbot of Evesham 2; the Bishop of Hereford 2; Robert of Bellême 3; Robert Fitzhamon 5, and divers other persons of note had some 29 houses among them[716]. However poor, however small Winchcombe may have been, it radically differed from the common manor and the common village.

[Burgesses attached to manors.]

We have seen above how in the Conqueror's day the Abbey of Westminster had a manor at Staines[717] and how that manor included 48 burgesses who paid 40_s._ a year. Were those burgesses really in Staines, and was Staines a borough? No, they were in the city of London. The Confessor had told his Middlesex thegns how he willed that St Peter and the brethren at Westminster should have the manor (_cotlif_) of Staines with the land called Staninghaw (_mid ðam lande Stæningehaga_) within London and all other things that had belonged to Staines[718]. Is not the guess permissible that Staining Lane in the City of London[719], wherein stood the church of St Mary, Staining, was so called, not 'because stainers lived in it,' but because it once contained the haws of the men of Staines? We must be careful before we find boroughs in Domesday Book, for its language is deceptive. Perhaps we may believe that really and physically there were forty-six burgesses in the vill of St Albans[720]; but, after what we have read of Staines, can we be quite sure that these burgesses were not in London? The burgesses who de iure 'are in' one place are often _de facto_ in quite another place.

[Tenure of the borough and tenure of land within the borough.]

We may for a moment pass over two centuries and turn to the detailed account of Cambridge given to us by the Hundred Rolls, the most elaborate description that we have of any medieval borough. Now in one sense the 'vill' or borough of Cambridge belongs to the king, and, under him, to the burgesses, for they hold it of him _in capite_ at a fee-farm rent. But this does not mean that each burgess holds his tenement of the corporation or _communitas_ of burgesses, which in its turn holds every yard of land of the king in chief. It does not even mean that each burgess holds immediately of the king, the _communitas_ intervening as farmer of the king's rents[721]. No, the titles of the various burgesses go up to the king by many various routes. Some of them pay rents to the officers of the borough who are the king's farmers; but many of them do not. The Chancellor and Masters of the University, for example, hold three messuages in the vill of Cambridge; 'but' say the sworn burgesses 'what they pay for the same, we do not know and can not discover[722].' How could it be otherwise? Domesday Book shows us that the Count of Britanny had ten burgesses in Cambridge[723]. Count Alan's houses will never be held in chief of the crown by any burgess: they will form part of the honour of Richmond to the end of time. We may take another example which will show the permanence of proprietary arrangements in the boroughs. From an account of Gloucester which comes to us from the year 1100 or thereabouts we learn that there were 300 houses in the king's demesne and 313 belonging to other lords. From the year 1455 we have another account which tells of 310 tenements paying landgavel to the king's farmers and 346 which pay them nothing[724].

[The king and other landlords.]

Perhaps no further examples are needed. But this tenurial heterogeneity seems to be an attribute of all or nearly all the very ancient boroughs, the county towns. In some cases the king was the landlord of far the greater number of the burgesses. In other cases the bishop became in course of time the lord of some large quarter of a town in which his cathedral stood. At Canterbury and Rochester, at Winchester and Worcester, this process had been at work from remote days; the bishops had been acquiring land and 'haws' within the walls[725]. But we can see that in Henry I.'s day there were still four earls who were keeping up their interest in their burgesses at Winchester[726]. In the later middle ages we may, if we will, call these places royal boroughs and the king's 'demesne boroughs,' for the burgesses derive their 'liberties' directly from the king. But we must keep these ancient boroughs well apart from any royal manors which the king has newly raised to burghal rank. In the latter he will be the immediate landlord of every burgess; in the former a good deal of rent will be paid, not to him, nor to the community as his farmers, but to those who are filling the shoes of the thegns of the shire.

[The oldest burh.]

This said, we will turn back our thoughts to the oldest days. The word that deserves our best attention is _burh_, the future _borough_, for little good would come of an attempt to found a theory upon the Latin words, such as _civitas_, _oppidum_ and _urbs_ which occur in some of those magniloquent land-books[727]. Now it seems fairly clear that for some long time after the Germanic invasions the word _burh_ meant merely a fastness, a stronghold, and suggested no thick population nor any population at all. This we might learn from the map of England. The hill-top that has been fortified is a _burh_. Very often it has given its name to a neighbouring village[728]. But, to say nothing of hamlets, we have full two hundred and fifty parishes whose names end in _burgh_, _borough_ or _bury_, and in many cases we see no sign in them of an ancient camp or of an exceptionally dense population. It seems a mere chance that they are not _tons_ or _hams_, _worths_ or _thorpes_. Then again, in Essex and neighbouring shires it is common to find that in the village called _X_ there is a squire's mansion or a cluster of houses called _X-bury_. Further, we can see plainly from our oldest laws that the palisade or entrenchment around a great man's house is a _burh_. Thus Alfred: The king's _burh-bryce_ (the sum to be paid for breaking his _burh_) is 120 shillings, an archbishop's 90 shillings, another bishop's 60 shillings, a twelve-hundred man's 30 shillings, a six-hundred-man's 15 shillings, a ceorl's edor-bryce (the sum to be paid for breaking his hedge) 5 shillings[729]. The ceorl, whose _wer_ is 200 shillings, will not have a _burh_, he will only have a hedge round his house; but the man whose _wer_ is 600 shillings will probably have some stockade, some rude rampart; he will have a _burh_.

[The king's burh.]

We observe the heavy _bót_ of 120 shillings which protects the king's _burh_. May we not see here the very first stage in the legal history of our boroughs? We pass over some centuries and we read in a statement of the Londoners' customs that a man who is guilty of unlawful violence must pay the king's _burh-bryce_ of five pounds[730]. And then the Domesday surveyors tell us how at Canterbury every crime committed in those streets which run right through the city is a crime against the king, and so it is if committed upon the high-roads outside the city for the space of one league, three perches and three feet[731]. This curious accuracy over perches and feet sends us to another ancient document:--'Thus far shall the king's peace (_grið_) extend from his _burhgeat_ where he is sitting towards all four quarters, namely, three miles, three furlongs, three acre-breadths, nine feet, nine hand-breadths, nine barley-corns[732].' And then we remember how Fleta tells us that the verge of the king's palace is twelve leagues in circumference, and how within that ambit the palace court, the king's most private court, has jurisdiction[733].

[The special peace of the burh.]

Has not legal fiction been at work since an early time? Has not the sanctity of the king's house extended itself over a group of houses? The term _burh_ seems to spread outwards from the defensible house of the king and with it the sphere of his _burh-bryce_ is amplified. Within the borough there reigns a special peace. This has a double meaning:--not only do acts which would be illegal anywhere become more illegal when they are done within the borough, but acts which would be legal elsewhere, are illegal there. King Edmund legislating against the blood-feud makes his _burh_ as sacred as a church; it is a sanctuary where the feud may not be prosecuted[734]. If in construing such a passage we doubt how to translate _burh_, whether by _house_ or by _borough_, we are admitting that the language of the law does not distinguish between the two. The Englishman's house is his castle, or, to use an older term, his _burh_; the king's borough is the king's house, for his house-peace prevails in its streets[735].

[The town and the burh.]

Our oldest laws seem to know no _burh_ other than the strong house of a great (but he need not be a very great) man. Early in the tenth century, however, the word had already acquired a new meaning. In Æthelstan's day it seems to be supposed by the legislator that a moot will usually be held in a _burh_. If a man neglects three summonses to a moot, the oldest men of the _burh_ are to ride to his place and seize his goods[736]. Already a _burh_ will have many men in it. Some of them will be elder-men, aldermen. A moot will be held in it. Very possibly this will be the shire-moot, for, since there is riding to be done, we see that the person who ought to have come to the moot may live at a distance[737]. A little later the _burh_ certainly has a moot of its own. Edgar bids his subjects seek the _burh-gemót_ as well as the _scyr-gemót_ and the _hundred-gemót_. The borough-moot is to be held thrice a year[738]. At least from this time forward, the borough has a court. An important line is thus drawn between the borough and the mere _tún_. The borough has a court; the village has none, or, if the villages are getting courts, this is due to the action of lords who have sake and soke and is not commanded by national law. National law commands that there shall be a moot thrice a year in every _burh_.

[The building of boroughs.]

The extension of the term _burh_ from a fortified house to a fortified group of houses must be explained by those who are skilled in the history of military affairs. It is for them to tell us, for example, how much use the Angles and Saxons in the oldest days made of the entrenched hill-tops, and whether the walls of the Roman towns were continuously repaired[739]. Howbeit, a time seems to have come, at latest in the struggle between the Danish invaders and the West-Saxon kings, when the establishment and maintenance of what we might call fortified towns was seen to be a matter of importance. There was to be a cluster of inhabited dwellings which as a whole was to be made defensible by ditch and mound, by palisade or wall. Edward the Elder and the Lady of the Mercians were active in this work. Within the course of a few years burgs were 'wrought' or 'timbered' at Worcester, Chester, Hertford, Witham in Essex, Bridgnorth, Tamworth, Stafford, Warwick, Eddisbury, Warbury, Runcorn, Buckingham, Towcester, Maldon, Huntingdon[740]. Whatever may be meant by the duty of repairing burgs when it is mentioned in charters coming from a somewhat earlier time, it must for the future be that of upholding those walls and mounds that the king and the lady are rearing. The land was to be burdened with the maintenance of strongholds. The land, we say. That is the style of the land-books. Land, even though given to a church, is not to be free (unless by exceptional favour) of army-service, bridge-work and borough-bettering or borough-fastening. Wall-work[741] is coupled with bridge-work; to the duty of maintaining the county bridges is joined the duty of constructing and repairing the boroughs. Shall we say the 'county boroughs'?

[The shire and its borough.]

Let us ask ourselves how the burden that is known as _burh-bót_, the duty that the Latin charters call _constructio_, _munitio_, _restauratio_, _defensio_, _arcis_ (for _arx_ is the common term) will really be borne. Is it not highly probable, almost certain, that each particular tract of land will be ascript to some particular _arx_ or _castellum_[742], and that if, for instance, there is but one _burh_ in a shire, all the lands in that shire must help to better that _burh_. Apportionment will very likely go further. The man with five hides will know how much of the mound or the wall he must maintain, how much 'wall-work' he must do. We see how the old bridge-work becomes a burden on the estates of the county landowners. From century to century the Cambridgeshire landowners contribute according to their hidage to repair the most important bridge of their county, a bridge which lies in the middle of the borough of Cambridge. Newer arrangements, the rise of castles and of borough communities, have relieved them from the duty of 'borough-fastening;' but the bridge-work is apportioned on their lands.

[Military geography.]

The exceedingly neat and artificial scheme of political geography that we find in the midlands, in the country of the true 'shires,' forcibly suggests deliberate delimitation for military purposes. Each shire is to have its borough in its middle. Each shire takes its name from its borough. We must leave it for others to say in every particular case whether and in what sense the shire is older than the borough or the borough than the shire: whether an old Roman chester was taken as a centre or whether the struggles between Germanic tribes had fixed a circumference. But a policy, a plan, there has been, and the outcome of it is that the shire maintains the borough[743].

There has come down to us in a sadly degenerate form a document which we shall hereafter call 'The Burghal Hidage[744].' It sets forth, so we believe, certain arrangements made early in the tenth century for the defence of Wessex against Danish inroads. It names divers strongholds, and assigns to each a large number of hides. A few of the places that it mentions we have not yet found on the map. Beginning in the east of Sussex and following the order of the list, we seem to see Hastings, Lewes, Burpham (near Arundel), Chichester, Porchester, Southampton, Winchester, Wilton, Tisbury (or perhaps Chisenbury), Shaftesbury, Twyneham, Wareham, Bredy, Exeter, Halwell near Totness, Lidford, Barnstaple, Watchet, Axbridge; then Langport and Lyng (which defend the isle of Athelney), Bath, Malmesbury, Cricklade, Oxford, Wallingford, Buckingham, Eastling near Guildford, and Southwark. Corrupt and enigmatical though this catalogue may be, it is of the highest importance. It shows how in the great age of burg-building the strongholds had wide provinces which in some manner or another were appurtenant to them, and it may also give us some precious hints about places in Wessex which once were national burgs but which forfeited their burghal character in the tenth century. Guildford seems to have risen at the expense of Eastling and Totness at the expense of Halwell, while Tisbury, Bredy and Watchet (if we are right in fancying that they are mentioned) soon lost caste. Lyng is not a place which we should have named among the oldest of England's burgs, and yet we have all read how Alfred wrought a 'work' at Athelney. In Wessex burgs rise and fall somewhat rapidly. North of the Thames the system is more stable. Also it is more artificial, for north of the Thames civil and military geography coincide.

[The shire's wall-work.]

Let us now look once more at the Oxford of Domesday Book. The king has twenty 'mural houses[745]' which belonged to Earl Ælfgar; they pay 13_s._ 2_d._ He has a house of 6_d._ which is constructively at Shipton; one of 4_d._ at Bloxham; one of 30_d._ at Risborough and two of 4_d._ at Twyford in Buckinghamshire. 'They are called mural houses because, if there be need and the king gives order, they shall repair the wall.' There follows a list of the noble houseowners, an archbishop, six bishops, three earls and so forth. 'All the above hold these houses free because of the reparation of the wall. All the houses that are called "mural" were in King Edward's time free of everything except army service and wall-work.' Then of Chester we read this[746]:--'To repair the wall and the bridge, the reeve called out one man from every hide in the county, and the lord whose man did not come paid 40_s_. to the king and earl.' The duty of maintaining the bulwark of the county's borough is incumbent on the magnates of the county. They discharge it by keeping haws in the borough and burgesses in those haws[747].

[Henry the Fowler and the German burgs.]

We may doubt whether the duty of the county to its borough has gone no farther than mere 'wall-work.' A tale from the older Saxony may come in well at this point. When the German king Henry the Fowler was building burgs in Saxony and was playing the part that had lately been played in England by Edward and Æthelflæd, he chose, we are told, the ninth man from among the _agrarii milites_; these chosen men were to live in the burgs; they were to build dwellings there for their fellows (_confamiliares_) who were to remain in the country tilling the soil and carrying a third of the produce to the burgs, and in these burgs all _concilia_ and _conventus_ and _convivia_ were to be held[748]. Modern historians have found in this story some difficulties which need not be noticed here. Only the core of it interests us. Certain men are clubbed together into groups of nine for the purpose of maintaining the burg as a garrisoned and victualled stronghold in which all will find room in case a hostile inroad be made.

[The shire thegns and their town houses.]

Turning to England we shall not forget how in the year 894 Alfred divided his forces into two halves; half were to take the field, half to remain at home, besides the men who were to hold the burgs[749]; but at all events we shall hardly go astray if we suggest that the thegns of the shire have been bound to keep houses and retainers in the borough of their shire and that this duty has been apportioned among the great estates[750]. We find that the baron of Domesday Book has a few burgesses in the borough and that these few burgesses 'belong' in some sense or another to his various rural manors. Why should he keep a few burgesses in the borough and in what sense can these men belong some to this manor and some to that? To all appearance this arrangement is not modern. King Edmund conveyed to his thegn Æthelweard an estate of seven hides at Tistead in Hampshire and therewith the haws within the burg of Winchester that belonged to those seven hides[751]. When the Bishop of Worcester loaned out lands to his thegns, the lands carried with them haws in the 'port' of Worcester[752]. We have all read of the ceorl who 'throve to thegn-right.' He had five hides of his own land, a church and a kitchen, a bell-tower and a _burh-geat-setl_, which, to our thinking, is just a house in the 'gate,' the street of the _burh_[753]. He did not acquire a town-house in order that he might enjoy the pleasures of the town. He acquired it because, if he was to be one of the great men of the county, he was bound to keep in the county's _burh_ retainers who would do the wall-work and hoard provisions sent in to meet the evil day when all men would wish to be behind the walls of a _burh_.

[The knights in the borough.]

We have it in our modern heads that the medieval borough is a sanctuary of peace, an oasis of 'industrialism' in the wilderness of 'militancy.' Now a sanctuary of peace the borough is from the very first. An exceptional and exalted peace reigns over it. If you break that peace you incur the king's _burh-bryce_. But we may strongly suspect that the first burg-men, the first _burgenses_, were not an exceptionally peaceful folk. Those _burhwaras_ of London who thrashed Swegen[754] and chose kings were no sleek traders; nor must we speak contemptuously of 'trained bands of apprentices' or of 'the civic militia.' In all probability these burg-men were of all men in the realm the most professionally warlike. Were we to say that in the boroughs the knightly element was strong we might mislead, for the word _knight_ has had chivalrous adventures. However, we may believe that the _burgensis_ of the tenth century very often was a _cniht_, a great man's _cniht_, and that if not exactly a professional soldier (professional militancy was but beginning) he was kept in the borough for a military purpose and was perhaps being fed by the manor to which he belonged. These knights formed gilds for religious and convivial purposes. At Cambridge there was a gild of thegns, who were united in blood-brotherhood. We can not be certain that all these thegns habitually lived in Cambridge. Perhaps we should rather say that already a Cambridgeshire club had its head-quarters in Cambridge and there held its 'morning-speeches' and its drinking bouts. These thegns had 'knights' who seem to have been in some sort inferior members of the gild and to have been bound by its rules[755]. Then we hear of 'knight-gilds' at London and Canterbury and Winchester[756]. Such gilds would be models for the merchant-gilds of after-days, and indeed when not long after the Conquest we catch at Canterbury our first glimpse of a merchant-gild, its members are calling themselves knights: knights of the chapman-gild[757]. Among the knights who dwelt in the burg such voluntary societies were the more needful, because these men had not grown up together as members of a community. They came from different districts and had different lords. In this heterogeneity we may also see one reason why a very stringent peace, the king's own house-peace, should be maintained, and why the borough should have a moot of its own. When compared with a village there is something artificial about the borough.

[_Buhr-bót_ and castle-guard.]

This artificiality exercised an influence over the later fate of the boroughs. The ground had been cleared for the growth of a new kind of community, one whose members were not bound together by feudal, proprietary, agricultural ties. But the strand that we have been endeavouring to trace is broken at the Conquest. The castle arises. It is garrisoned by knights who are more heavily armed and more professionally militant than were their predecessors. The castle is now what wants defending; the knights who defend it form no part of the burghal community, and perhaps 'the castle fee' is in law no part of the borough. And yet let us see how in the twelfth century the king's castle at Norwich was manned. It was manned by the knights of the Abbot of St Edmund's. One troop served there for three months and then was relieved by another, and those who were thus set free went home to the manors with which the abbot had enfeoffed them and which they held by the service of castle-guard[758]. Much in this arrangement is new; the castle itself is new; but it is no new thing, we take it, that the _burh_ should be garrisoned by the knights of abbots or earls. And who built the castles, who built the Tower of London? Let us read what the chronicler says of the year 1097:--Also many shires which belonged to London for work[759] were sorely harassed by the wall that they wrought around the tower, and by the bridge, which had been nearly washed away, and by the work of the king's hall that was wrought at Westminster. There were shires or districts which from of old owed this work or work of this kind to London-bury[760].

[Borough and market.]

Long before the Conquest, however, a force had begun to play which was to give to the boroughs their most permanent characteristic. They were to be centres of trade. We must not exclude the hypothesis that some places were fortified and converted into burgs because they were already the focuses of such commerce as there was. But the general logic of the process we take to have been this:--The king's _burh_ enjoys a special peace: Even the men who are going to or coming from it are under royal protection: Therefore within its walls men can meet together to buy and sell in safety: Also laws which are directed against theft command that men shall not buy and sell elsewhere: Thus a market is established: Traders begin to build booths round the market-place and to live in the borough. A theory has indeed been brilliantly urged which would find the legal germ of the borough rather in a market-peace than in the peace of a burg[761]. But this doctrine has difficulties to meet. A market-peace is essentially temporary, while the borough's peace is eternal. A market court, if it arises, will have a jurisdiction only over bargains made and offences committed on market-days, whereas the borough court has a general competence and hears pleas relating to the property in houses and lands. Here in England during the Angevin time the 'franchise,' or royally granted right, of holding a market is quite distinct from the legal essence of the borough. Lawful markets are held in many places that are not boroughs; indeed in the end by calling a place 'a mere market-town' we should imply that it was no borough. Already in Domesday Book this seems to be the case. Markets are being held and market-tolls are being taken in many vills which are not of burghal rank[762]. Perhaps also we may see the borough-peace and the market-peace lying side by side. In the Wallingford of the Confessor's day there were many persons who had sake and soke within their houses. If any one spilt blood and escaped into one of those houses before he was attached, the owner received the blood-wite. But it was not so on Saturdays, for then the money went to the king 'because of the market[763].' Thus the king's borough-peace seems to be intensified on market-days; on those days it will even penetrate the houses of the immunists. So at Dover some unwonted peace or 'truce' prevailed in the town from St. Michael's Day to St. Andrew's: that is to say, during the herring season[764].

[Establishment of markets.]

The establishment of a market is not one of those indefinite phenomena which the historian of law must make over to the historian of economic processes. It is a definite and a legal act. The market is established by law. It is established by law which prohibits men from buying and selling elsewhere than in a duly constituted market. To prevent an easy disposal of stolen goods is the aim of this prohibition. Our legislators are always thinking of the cattle-lifter. At times they seem to go the full length of decreeing that only in a 'port' may anything be bought or sold, unless it be of trifling value; but other dooms would also sanction a purchase concluded before the hundred court. He who buys elsewhere runs a risk of being treated as a thief if he happens to buy stolen goods[765]. Official witnesses are to be appointed for this purpose in every hundred and in every _burh_: twelve in every hundred and small _burh_, thirty-three in a large _burh_[766]. Here once more we see the _burh_ co-ordinated with the hundred. A by-motive favours this establishment of markets. Those who traffic in the safety of the king's _burh_ may fairly be asked to pay some toll to the king. They enjoy his peace; perhaps also the use of royal weights and measures, known and trustworthy, is another part of the valuable consideration that they receive. First and last throughout the history of the boroughs toll is a matter of importance[767]. It gives the king a revenue from the borough, a revenue that he can let to farm. Also, though we do not think that the borough court was in its origin a mere market court, the disputes of the market-place will provide the borough court with plentiful litigation, and in this quarter also the king will find a new source of income. Among the old land-books that which speaks most expressly of the profits of jurisdiction as the subject-matter of a gift is a charter which concerns the town of Worcester. Æthelred and Æthelflæd, the ealdorman and lady of the Mercians, have, at the request of the bishop, built a _burh_ at Worcester, and they declare that of all the rights that appertain to their lordship both in market (_on ceapstowe_) and in street, within the _burh_ and without, they have given half to God and St. Peter, with the witness of King Alfred and all the wise of Mercia. The lord of the church is to have half of all, be it land-fee, or fiht-wite, stealing, wohceapung (fines for buying or selling contrary to the rules of the market) or borough-wall-scotting[768]. Quite apart from the rent of houses, there is a revenue to be gained from the borough.

[Moneyers in the burh.]

Another rule has helped to define the borough, and this rule also has its root among the regalia. No one, says King Æthelstan, is to coin money except in a port; in Canterbury there may be seven moneyers, four of the king, two of the bishop, one of the abbot; in Rochester three, two of the king, one of the bishop; in London-borough eight; in Winchester six; in Lewes two; in Hastings one; in Chichester one; in Hampton two; in Wareham two; in Exeter two; in Shaftesbury two, and in each of the other boroughs one[769]. Already, then, a _burh_ is an entity known to the law: every _burh_ is to have its moneyer.

[_Burh_ and _port_.]

We have thus to consider the _burh_ (1) as a stronghold, a place of refuge, a military centre: (2) as a place which has a moot that is a unit in the general, national system of moots: (3) as a place in which a market is held. When in the laws this third feature is to be made prominent, the _burh_ is spoken of as a _port_, and perhaps from the first there might be a _port_ which was not a _burh_[770]. The word _port_ was applied to inland towns. To this usage of it the _portmoot_ or _portmanmoot_ that in after days we may find in boroughs far from the coast bears abiding testimony. On the other hand, except on the seaside, this word has not become a part of many English place names[771]. If, as seems probable, it is the Latin _portus_, we apparently learn from the use made of it that at one time the havens (and some of those havens may not have been in England) were the only known spots where there was much buying and selling. But be it remembered that a market-place, a _ceap-stow_, does not imply a resident population of buyers and sellers; it does not imply the existence of retailers[772].

[Military and commercial elements in the borough.]